Category: Op-ed

By James Morton Turner and Emily Pawley (Originally published in The Globe Post) For all of the mayhem and missteps of the Donald Trump administration, the president has been unswerving in his commitment to tearing down the nation’s environmental laws and regulations. To date, much of Trump’s anti-environmental agenda has centered on undoing what President […]

The Environmental Protection Agency made news recently for excluding reporters from a “summit” meeting on chemical contamination in drinking water. Episodes like this are symptoms of a larger problem: an ongoing, broad-scale takeover of the agency by industries it regulates.

Pruitt relied on tactics deployed by two previous Republican administrations — Ronald Reagan, who staged a frontal assault on the EPA early in his presidency, and George W. Bush, who worked to undermine the science underpinning the EPA’s actions.

by Toly Rinberg and Andrew Bergman, EDGI Members, Op-Ed from the New York Times. Scott Pruitt during an interview in his office at the Environmental Protection Agency in October. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg) By altering and removing climate websites built over years and paid for by tax dollars, the Trump administration is actively working to muddy the overwhelming […]

by Leif Fredrickson, EDGI Member, Op-Ed reblogged from Washington Post. The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs is key to President Trump achieving his deregulatory vision. (Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images) The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) is foreign to most Americans. It had no cameos in “The West Wing” or “House of Cards,” […]

by Leif Fredrickson, EDGI Member, Op-Ed reblogged from The Guardian. ‘The EPA began in 1970 as an agency charged with curbing pollution.’ Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images The Environmental Protection Agency’s new administrator, Scott Pruitt, has called for a “back-to-basics” or “originalist” approach to the agency. It is unclear what he means, but in a 22 May […]

by Leif Fredrickson, EDGI Member, Op-Ed reblogged from Washington Post. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt doesn’t understand his own agency’s history. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP) Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, has set a “back-to-basics” agenda for the agency. In media interviews, he refers to himself as an “EPA originalist.” What on earth […]

by Lindsey Dillon, EDGI Member, Op-Ed reblogged from The Conversation. Abandoned industrial buildings at San Francisco’s Pier 70, with a smokestack in the background. Lindsey Dillon, CC BY-NC-ND San Francisco has embarked on a project to transform its industrial southeast waterfront into a bike-friendly destination called the Blue Greenway. When completed, the Blue Greenway will be a 13-mile network of […]